Related papers: Axion Fragmentation
We consider a D-dimensional fluid membrane in a D+1-dimensional embedding space, subject to quantum fluctuations. The corresponding action is invariant under coordinate transformations and depends only on the shape of the membrane and its…
A new experimental approach is introduced to investigate the relaxation of the nuclear deformation degrees of freedom. Highly excited fissioning systems with compact shapes and low angular momenta are produced in peripheral relativistic…
We calculate the time evolution of the expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor for a minimally-coupled massless scalar field in cosmological spacetimes, with an application to dark energy in mind. We first study the evolution from…
Axions are produced during a period of dilaton-driven inflation by amplification of quantum fluctuations. We show that for some range of string cosmology parameters and some range of axion masses, primordial axions may constitute a large…
We investigate the thermodynamical properties of quantum fields in curved spacetime. Our approach is to consider quantum fields in curved spacetime as a quantum system undergoing an out-of-equilibrium transformation. The non-equilibrium…
A localized charged particle oscillating near a reflecting boundary is considered as a model for non-cancellation of vacuum fluctuations. Although the mean velocity of the particle is sinusoidal, the velocity variance produced by vacuum…
We investigate the frictional forces due to quantum fluctuations acting on a small sphere rotating near a surface. At zero temperature, we find the frictional force near a surface to be several orders of magnitude larger than that for the…
The process of quantum creation of a qusihomogeneous inflationary universe near a cosmological singularity is considered. It is shown that during the evolution quantum fluctuations of spatial topologies increase and the universe acquires…
A central object in any axionic theory is its periodic potential, which is typically generated by instantons. The goal of this paper is to understand what physically happens to the theory when we lose control of the potential's instanton…
This paper studies the decay of a large, closed domain wall in a closed universe. Such walls can form in the presence of a broken, discrete symmetry. We introduce a novel process of quantum decay for such a wall, in which the vacuum…
The usual description of inflationary fluctuations uses the framework of quantum field theory (QFT) in curved spacetime, in which quantum fluctuations are superimposed on a classical background spacetime. Even for large fluctuations, such…
We study a massive inflaton minimally coupled to the FRW Universe using the semiclassical gravity derived from canonical quantum gravity. It is found that the semiclassical quantum gravity leads to the power-law expansion $t^{2/3}$ in an…
We study the effects of gravitational back-reaction in models of Quintessence. The effective energy-momentum tensor with which cosmological fluctuations back-react on the background metric will in some cases lead to a termination of the…
We introduce and study a model designed to simultaneously shed light on the mysteries connected with Baryogenesis, Dark Matter and Dark Energy. The model describes a self-interacting complex axion field whose imaginary part, a pseudo-scalar…
We treat the effects of quantum field fluctuations on the decay of a meta-stable state of a self-coupled scalar field. We consider two varieties of field fluctuations and their potential effects in a semiclassical description. The first are…
We analyze the equilibrium fluctuations of the density, current and tagged particle in symmetric exclusion with a slow bond. The system evolves in the one-dimensional lattice and the jump rate is everywhere equal to one except at the slow…
Numerical computations of transport coefficients at low temperatures are presented for shapes typically encountered in nuclear fission. The influence of quantum effects of the nucleonic degrees of freedom is examined, with pair correlations…
We show how the quantum to classical transition of the cosmological fluctuations produced during inflation can be described by means of the influence functional and the master equation. We split the inflaton field into the system-field…
This thesis tackles the vast question of generating accelerated periods of expansion of the universe. Models loosely related were developed in the early and late universe. In the early universe, generalizations of the Schwinger effect were…
The original axion natural inflation model predicts a tensor-to-scalar ratio exceeding experimental limits. Conversely, in aligned axion inflation, inflation can proceed along trajectories emerging from near a saddle point of the two-field…